London buses might soon run on coffee. A company called Bio-Bean has teamed up with London’s public bus system to contribute 1,590 gallons of fuel to the city as part of a pilot project – enough to power one bus for a year.
There are about 9,500 buses in London, many of which run on diesel and 2,729 of which are hybrid-electric. As of 2017, 71 buses were electric and eight ran on hydrogen fuel cells.
The coffee project is a demonstration and publicity run for Bio-Bean’s fuel, which is derived from diesel and oil collected from discarded coffee grounds. According to Bio-Bean, people in London create 200,000 metric tons (about 220,000 tons) of coffee waste per year. That includes waste from offices, coffee shops, and coffee factories. Bio-Bean dries the waste grounds and mixes them with diesel to form the coffee-based fuel. Bio-Bean also forms other waste grounds into biomass pellets which can be burnt in fireplaces or stoves for home heating. Bio-Bean says that their process saves 6.8 metric tons (7.5 tons) of CO2 emissions per one metric ton (1.1 ton) of waste coffee grounds recycled.
“It’s a great example of what can be done when we start to reimagine waste as an untapped resource,” Bio-Bean Founder Arthur Kay said in a statement to the BBC.
Bio-Bean told CNN that there is no “formal” plan to implement the fuel in buses in London in the long term, but they are looking for more opportunities in both the UK and the U.S.
Bio-Bean works in partnership with the coil and gas company Shell.
